Waste error undermines public trust

Guelph Mercury

The City of Guelph’s “error in judgment” in a residential waste collection episode will earn the municipality no credits in its community relations realm.

On Feb. 19, a city resident noted, photographed and widely emailed an image of a city waste department worker tossing organic waste bags and bags of recyclables into the back of a trash compactor truck. The resident wanted to confirm and register what he was seeing on his own street.

The city confirmed during the week it was investigating this report of the apparent mixing of different waste streams. On Friday, a waste department official confirmed the resident had witnessed something that should not have taken place. Due to an “error in judgment,” the official said, a waste collection effort had seen different waste streams collected and compacted together.

No mention was made about which level(s) of the waste collection team had made the “error in judgment.” A suggestion was floated that the recyclable materials might have been reclaimed from the truck’s load after it was dumped — although the city couldn’t confirm that had taken place. The city’s position on the matter was that it was a one-time bad decision and won’t happen again.

That type of answer has a best chance of succeeding when there is a great degree of trust with the party offering it.

It’s clear from social media response to this episode, and its resolution, that there’s a lot of skepticism in the community in relation to this department and over whether its position on this matter puts the issue to rest. The municipality has weathered recent assertions that its waste collections crew has engaged in this behaviour before — and there are further allegations of this sort as a result of this Feb .19 incident.

The waste collection process is a huge undertaking for any municipality. That’s particularly so for one this size — let alone one in transition from one waste collection system to another.

Mistakes happen in any system small or large. But in one that depends on the public’s participation to sort waste streams diligently, the city will only hurt itself and its chances for waste management success if it doesn’t avoid such “error in judgment” incidents in the future.